Because One World is Never Enough

Nordic Languages

Yesterday and today buildings throughout the world were illuminated with blue lights in honor of the birthday of a country that has developed a stellar reputation well outside its borders in recent decades.

My journey with Finnish has been an interesting one, because it’s one that I learned how to speak well while leaving me in complete mystery in exactly HOW I pulled it off.

I’ve used all of the following:

Reading dialogues out loud

Reading grammar notes out loud from textbooks

Watching Disney film snippets and Pokémon in Finnish (dubbed versions)

Clozemaster

Transparent Language

Writing exercises

Later on (once I acquired B2 level) teaching the language to other people.

Language Exchange Groups (I’ve had fewer opportunities to use Finnish with real people in comparison to Swedish, Danish and Norwegian [especially the first two])

Songs (including passively, with lyrics and actively with karaoke)

Radio

Let’s Play Videos with Finnish commentary

Writing to people who speak the language.

Video games

Too often I get asked the question “what do you use to learn so many languages?”

The question should not be “what do you use to learn” them but “what DON’T you use to learn them?” I became successful with Finnish (despite the fact that I still feel as though I have a long way to go with it) because I threw EVERYTHING at it.

And that’s what a successful attempt to learn a language LOOKS LIKE! You don’t’ just expect to use “Duolingo” and get fluent (it’s in all likelihood not going to happen). You need to use AS MANY tools as possible to make a language a part of your life. The most successful of my language missions have had that, while those that were / are lacking are those in which I still have yet to use EVERY available means of using the language.

Looking back on the journey, here’s what I wish I told myself in 2012 when the Finnish Language and I seemed like we had a future together (which we DID!)

Throw Out Limiting Beliefs Immediately

Too many people are stuck with ideas that they’ll never be good, or that they won’t even be manageable. Others are stuck with ideas that they’ll just get answered in English all of the time. Yet others enter the world of Finnish and other target languages with a negative mindset, thinking that it is something they intend to lose as soon as they enter it.

I entered at first saying “I’ll see what I can get. I can always learn something and I can always learn more later”. But all the while I never DREAMED that I would be capable of mastering the grammar of the language, both colloquially as well as formally, the way that I did. And I should have thought even more than “I’ll manage”, I should have thought “I’m going to be GREAT!!!”

And this leads into another point…

Finnish (or any other grammatically rich language) is a giant feast. Savor each ingredient separately and don’t expect to gulf down EVERYTHING at once.

Many of the cases are straight-up prepositions (as is the case with the other Finno-Ugric Languages), but some other elements are more idiomatic. One that trips up my students regularly is the –ksi ending, which indicates that you are talking about a noun, and more specifically “given that it is that noun” or “into that noun” (e.g. transformation).

Okay now you have ONE concept, now see if you can manage personal endings for nouns (Kaveri [friend] + ni [my] -> “Kaverini” – “friend(s) of mine”) or the fantastic conjugating “no” (en -> I … not, not I. et – you (sing.) … not, not you, ei -> he/she/it …. Not, not he/she/it, etc.) usage of nuanced suffixes, verb conjugation, AND variant forms of verb conjugation and other grammatical features in colloquial speech! (These might not be in your textbook!)

Oh, and manage all of these concepts at once spoken by a native speaker at quick speed. Sure, the fact that Finnish words are always accented on the first syllable is going to help you, to some degree, as is the fact that some Finns speak very slowly in comparison to Romance Language speakers, but the grammatical buffet of Finnish is going to OVERWHELM YOU.

Unless, you take it in, bit by bit, and count every single one of the small victories.

This is true with other languages, but this is even MORE true with languages in which you might struggle with forming a simple sentence for weeks!

Use Flashcards and Other Similar Apps WITH Immersion for Progress

Memrise helped me reach my goals with Finnish but I couldn’t have done it with only them. I also had to use YouTube Finnish in order to bring words that I “vaguely” memorized in the app into a genuine context where they made sense.

Often when I was watching any amount of fun things in Finnish I would remember a word that I had seen in Memrise matching the context EXACTLY.

Unless a language is VERY closely related to one you know, or one that you’ve had experience being exposed to but have gaps in it (as is the case with Polish for me, for example), the flash cards by yourself are not going to be ideal.

But pair with other methods, everything builds off each other.

Being disappointed with your language progress means that you’re either studying too much or using the language without studying too much.

For all of my languages regardless of level, I noticed that there are some languages that I’ve STUDIED too much to the exclusion of using them for fun (Irish) and others that I’ve USED too much without studying too much of them anymore (Greenlandic). To correct this imbalance, apply one or the other, depending on what you HAVEN’T been doing.

For much of my Finnish studies, I managed that balance PERFECTLY, more than with any other language I’ve studied. And I’m glad I did.

Small words mean a lot in making you sound like a fluent speaker.

Thanks to me having watched a lot of Pokémon in the Finnish dub (more than I care to admit) as well as a lot of gaming channels in Finnish, I’ve really learned how to use simple one-word expressions that make me sound believable when I put them in my speech (some of these qualify as “filler words” but not always).

Think about it: how often have you heard non-native English speakers say “very good” as opposed to “cool beans!” or “that’s great to hear!” (the latter of which are very American indeed, I think).

I got a lot of simple expressions like these thanks to me using Finnish in these “controlled environments”. They didn’t make me fluent, but they made me confident and believable with great regularity.

No language is too hard.

I don’t necessarily say “no language is too unlearnable” because I’ve tried to find some languages to learn in which I can almost seldom find ANY materials for them.

But even though a language like Greenlandic (and Burmese, later on) got me to almost doubt this, you need to keep in mind that, especially with more politically powerful languages, your L2 is learnable, even to near-native fluency. You just need to find methods that work, and utilize EVERYTHING you have in order to make it work.

The apps themselves are great, but they won’t make you fluent alone. Same for the books, videos and TV shows. Bring them altogether, and you’ll become someone who impressed almost EVERY native speaker you’ll meet.

Two Languages (three if you count English which I used at time). One city. A lot of ice and friendly people. Was it a success? MOST DEFINITELY!

I’ve been studying Greenland on-and-off since 2013 when I first encountered that Lonely Planet book that described the Greenlandic Language as “the result of a small child banging on a typewriter”.

Cupid’s arrow to the heart. Photographed the entire language section of that guidebook, page by page. Put the words into Memrise. I thereby made the site’s first Greenlandic course which ultimately ended up in the language being included in the OFFICIAL LISTING OF LANGUAGES IN THE APP!

Then there’s Danish, which I’ve been studying / speaking since 2013 as well. Frightened to speak it fearing judgmental native speakers until I encountered some people who spoke it in 2014 (native Danish speakers as well as L2 speakers from Germany). Then I realized there was nothing to be scared of.

Greenlandic: Weak although impressive on some level. Certainly a lot better than my Burmese was earlier this year (although I think my Burmese is SLIGHTLY better than my Greenlandic now, truth be told). I managed some tasks impressively, some with difficulty, and I have absolutely no ability to speak in Greenlandic about deeply serious or philosophical topics (but ONE DAY!)

Danish: Conversationally fluent to professionally fluent, depending on my mood and who I’m talking to. There is one thing, however. Sometimes I still feel frightened and judged when I try to speak certain languages with strangers. This results in “cymbals banging in my head” which can significantly deter my ability to think of vocabulary at the right moment. But surprisingly, I’ve IMPROVED as a result of being here.

So how did I do? For one, I managed almost ALL of my business that could be done in Danish or Greenlandic in those two languages. In conversations with friends I think I managed a good balance between Greenland, Danish, and English (hey, it’s fair that I share my native language with them, too!) Especially in the second half with Danish, I expressed myself without any issue and had absolutely no glaring issues with being answered in English after the second day!

Above all, GREAT SUCCESS! I also learned a lot of words as well and gained insight into the dynamics of bilingual societies (this is the first time I’m doing immersion in a place with TWO local languages, although no doubt Danish is significantly less prominent in more rural areas of Greenland outside of the major cities)

Yes, I know I was on a break, but I thought it would be important for me to write at least SOMETHING because I’m here in Greenland for the first time:

In a multilingual place, expect rapid changes in switching languages at times.

This was fun. I’ve heard of people going to places like Montreal or South Africa or other places where multiple languages are used between people and in the public sphere. I wasn’t sure what sort of dynamic to expect, but interestingly I found that the dynamic between many Greenlanders involved hopping between languages in conversations sometimes (this might be especially evident as far as families that may have different first languages among them). My host family used Greenlandic, Danish and English with me, sometimes switching throughout the conversation, and sometimes I even overheard some people doing the same. Granted, with probably about the same frequency you’ll encounter people sticking to one language at a time.

There are SO many dynamics to be taken into account with this that it probably would take more than a week to fully investigate and delve into them.

Don’t take being spoken to in English personally, especially if it occurs at a time in which the person who you are speaking to is aware that you are from an English-speaking country.

Imagine this: you hear that somebody is from a place where your L2 or L3 or L28 is spoken. Great success! So you begin speaking in the language of that place, believing that, in so doing, you will demonstrate cultural appreciation and a willingness to show that, on some level, you care about where they came from.

That’s how some of the people who “answer in English” may be thinking!

I’ve noticed that usually a shift to English tended to occur in Greenland not so much when I messed up (usually I just rebounded and continued in the target language, especially with Danish) but rather when (1) somehow they found out I was from the U.S. (either I told them or something on my personal information made it clear, etc) or (2) they were aware of the fact that I was American beforehand (even if I had communication with them in other languages in the past. Note: my written Greenlandic is tremendously weak, although I’m hoping that predictive text and better learning methods will help me in the future).

In the other Nordic countries, conversations are being had about the threat that English is posing to their language. In Iceland this is particularly strong (I feel). In Greenland, it is my understanding that this conversation isn’t even had as far as English is concerned (I think a lot of the debates center on Greenlandic vs. Danish). Danish was (and is) 1000x easier to learn and to maintain than Greenlandic is (and this is more to do with political power of these two languages than anything else). But given that I was willing to learn and converse in BOTH, it actually sent a message to people that I really, REALLY cared about Greenland, its people and its culture (learning one language for a trip is cool, but two?)

I can imagine that a lot of Greenlanders want to feel global and globally connected. To that end, I am willing to use English with them to some degree, as long as I can use the other local languages as well. I used English at times, but never to the degree that it became a detriment to my “language learning mission”. (In Iceland, I strove / will strive to avoid English as much as I can).

What’s more, there are some immigrants to Greenland (Yes, they exist!) who speak neither Greenlandic nor Danish, and I sometimes encountered these folks behind service counters. In one Thai restaurant in Nuuk I even saw the menu in Danish that was coded with number-and-letter combinations, possibly to get over any language barrier than may be involved.

If you’re headed to a multilingual place (that is to say, a place with more than one LOCAL language. Nuuk qualifies [with Greenlandic and Danish] and while Reykjavik does have many English-speaking denizens, Icelandic is the ONLY local language there), get advice beforehand (or as soon as you can) about what sort of languages you should use in which spaces.

Also if you can determine what language a certain waiter or celebrity or person you’re meeting speaks, use that to your advantage as well.

On the way from the airport I was told that it was wisest for me to usually use Danish while buying things (which I did). But obviously using Danish was not 100% suitable (or even 50% suitable) for EVERY SINGLE SITUATION that I encountered in Nuuk. Simply put, there were situations in which knowledge of Danish wasn’t essential in the slightest, and Greenlandic was.

Again, among people who speak both, you are welcome to use both, especially in casual conversation. I would gather the same would hold for any other bilingual area.

Don’t Overthink Your Mistakes (or Anything Else)

No, just because you messed up that one word doesn’t mean you’re a failure. No, just because somebody began speaking English to you that one time doesn’t mean you’re a failure either (this happened once or twice to me by the way). And for the love of everything that is holy, don’t belittle your accomplishments!

Especially if you’ve come from a family of over-achievers and perfectionists (a bit like mine used to be), you may hold yourself to a standard that is way too high. Don’t expect yourself to be an angel. Believe me, even the best of polyglots out there aren’t angels either, even if it may seem like that in their videos. I sure know I ain’t!

If you’re starting to feel doubt, think about how far you’ve come and how FEW people have attempted what you’re doing.

Surrounded by native speakers of languages that I spoke to varying degrees made me self-conscious at times. My perfectionism (which exists in my heart even though my brain knows it should be gone) also did not help. Sometimes I wondered if I would ever be taken as a “serious” polyglot by masses of people on the Internet, or even if I really DESERVED to present at any polyglot conference at all.

And this is DESPITE the fact that I manage MOST of my interactions during this trip without ANY English. (Even though I did use English because, again, I don’t want to be greedy. I understand that people see me as a resource in a country where non-Danish foreigners weren’t even allowed to visit until 1953 [!!!])

I also took for granted the fact that I could read all of the signs, all of the menus, all of the everything (in Danish – note that the vast majority of these things in Nuuk are actually bilingual Greenlandic / Danish).

If the language you’re speaking is threatened or perceived as threatened, you have advantages with its speakers (and getting help from them) on many, MANY levels

Greenlandic-speakers see their language as vulnerable, and UNESCO agrees with them. Against the mini-giant that is Danish and the ultra-global-giant that is English, it seems that Greenlandic sees itself stuck in a magnificent clash of outsider cultures (well…these two cultures…).

When I began speaking to Greenlandic speakers in places like pubs and restaurants and my host family, I got every single possible variety of positive reaction and tons of continued encouragement. Greenlandic speakers are probably among the most helpful native speakers I’ve encountered for any language ANYWHERE!

I got business contacts, high fives, hugs, compliments, in-depth conversations and plenty, PLENTY more. And this is with my manageable-in-tourist-situations-mostly Greenlandic.

The only languages I remember getting this sort of red carpet treatment for were (1) Icelandic, (2) Hungarian and (3) Polish (and even [3] was very selective. Some people reacted with utter joy and others were a tad confused. I should say that Poland is a FANTASTIC environment for language immersion with JUST the right amount of English usage vs. usage of the local language that is helpful for whatever you’re doing!)

Don’t assume other people are judging you (or will judge you) for speaking their language.

Greenlandic people usually don’t show their emotion at all—EVEN in comparison to other Nordic countries. As an American, I found this extremely jarring and almost strange. Anyone who knows American culture even on a surface level knows how “obsessed with feelings” we are.

Sometimes I was tempted to think that people were displeased with me, and then I remembered that the cultural mentality is extremely different in comparison to the United States.

And one person went so far as to even tell me that the idea that “speaking Danish -> Greenlanders will judge you as a bit of a colonial invader” wasn’t actually that true at all.

Point is, a lot of people “not being nice to you” or “not liking you” may actually be…imagined…

On the other side, in the United States we have the reverse problem, being too kind to people with whom we do not really want to interact with. And I think, to a degree, that’s significantly more dangerous. But onto the next point…

Pubs and gatherings are great places to help you with language learning. Keep in mind that they serve different ends.

Pubs -> great for finding people that will help you with individual words or gaps in your vocabulary. You may encounter some people who may be very carefree due to alcohol and they’ll (1) be forgiving of your mistakes and (2) compliment you way too much. If you’re a beginner and you feel up to it, I would make evenings like this a priority.

After all, I think the Polyglot Bar and Mundo Lingo also really helped me especially with French which I learned almost ENTIRELY through this method! (even though sometimes I fear that I speak it not quite as well as I would like and it is NOWHERE near my strongest language and sometimes I’m definitely not fluent!)

Gatherings -> great for having serious conversations and also rehearsing new vocabulary that you may have memorized in response to the theme of the event. It’s also a true measure to see how spontaneous you really can be and you’ll encounter speakers of many languages at larger gatherings. Great for advanced learners especially who want to go from good or very good to divinely invincible.

Over time, you’ll grow into a persona with a language you’re proficient or fluent in

Imitate the people. Note what they do. Learn to behave a little more like them. Pretend you are them. You’ll be able to grow into fluency a lot more readily with a language in which you have a persona. How does your native-language self compare to the sort of people you see around you? Note the differences and act on them. This may actually happen naturally as a result of being around people.

I had someone tell me that over the course of the week I was looking “progressively more like an Inuit”. Make of that whatever you will!

Your goal isn’t to be mistaken for a local. Your goal is to communicate.

Okay, maybe you DO want to be mistaken for a local, but obviously if you haven’t visited the country or if you haven’t developed deep in-person friendships with people there, there will probably be something in your body language or in the way you speak that will give it away.

I look vaguely Asiatic (probably my Jewish background) and I look vaguely Nordic (probably my Swedish-American background) but I don’t really look like I’m Inuk in the slightest. I don’t dress like Greenlanders do (and I was told this to my face, Greenlandic people really liked my fashion style and said that I looked like a “super-manly American cowboy”. No joke!) I don’t look like a “typical Dane” either, regarding both my fashion and my physical appearance.

None of that mattered in the slightest because my pronunciation in both Greenlandic and Danish were good (so I’ve been told) and in the case of Danish I got all of what I wanted to say said almost all of the time (except when my nervousness got the better of me and in both cases it was when I was speaking to people whom I had seen on TV, concerts, etc.).

I think the one thing I need to work on is internal self-doubt and freezing up sometimes. I think that’s really preventing me from being at my best consistently using foreign languages. And I guess that’s probably gonna be part of my New Year’s Resolution for 2018 (COMING SO SOON?!!?)

Ten years ago today, I enrolled as a freshman at a place of local legend in Middletown, Connecticut.

Here I am today, a long time after that fateful day, and one degree and many, MANY transformations later, I am going to think about how the place and the people there (both the faculty and the students) affected me on the long term.

In short, looking at the journey I’ve undertaken thus far, what part of it was made possible by the red and black?

For those of you who probably stumbled on this page wondering exactly who I am (and who have no intention on clicking the “about” button at the top of the page), allow me to explain: I’m Jared Gimbel, I graduated in 2011 with a High Honors degree in the College of Letters Program and Classical Studies (with a Jewish Studies Certificate side-order).

Right now I do a lot of work with language learning and teaching, primarily with Jewish and Nordic languages (keep in mind that there was no department of Nordic Languages [e.g. Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic] when I was there at Wesleyan and I doubt that there will be in the near future, but I can dream…). I translate from many languages into English, primarily Danish and Yiddish, I have had conversations in 30+ languages over the course of my life and I haven’t even hit my 30’s yet as of the time of writing.

As to the “how many languages” question, I usually have to keep the number artificially deflated lest I encounter skeptics. But in a setting with people from many nationalities, the skepticism never lasts for long…

Most importantly, I’m working on a video game which is like a Pokémon / Earthbound / Undertale / Final Fantasy set in a cute-cartoon version of contemporary Greenland. Set for release next year “Kaverini: Nuuk Adventures” promises to be a real treat and I and my team promise to deliver!

Okay, enough about me, more about college:

What did Wesleyan make possible for me?

The Kaleidoscope of Truth

Thanks in part to my religious education doubled with high school “teaching to the test”, I had been instilled with the idea of absolute truth, especially in the humanities.

Later on it occurred to me that, much like the kaleidoscope on my father’s coffee table, truth was something that could be adjusted. Much like I spin the kaleidoscope and I get a different image, I can spin the perspective and get a different truth.

The understanding that there is uncertainty in all things is liberating, and it also serves to eliminate limiting beliefs.

What’s more, it also helped me undo the shackles of my religious education that tried to tell me that there is a truth in all things and that it is absolute and genuine (and interestingly, I think the idea of makhlokiot [arguments and contentions] are an essential element of Judaism, something that rabbis I encountered later on in my life, including those at Wesleyan, made sure to deliver to me!)

Any system could be unmade and reconstructed from the bottom up. It taught me how to be a revolutionary, and this blog and my many ideas about language learning would have not been possible without it.

The Value of Exploration

So many people at Wesleyan University, especially the students, were endlessly curious about other cultures, other topics, other fields and were truly willing to try new things.

Granted, thanks to me being more socially conservative then than I am now (I almost never partied in college at all…) I wasn’t an explorer in every sense.

People were willing to look at all details, to make quaint observations, to bring up their life experiences and assist other people on the journey upwards.

At JTS, I didn’t find this exploration present to the same degree. Nor did I find it in Heidelberg as often. The same was true for Hebrew University. It is true that exploration was an essential part of the educational experience in all of these places, but Wesleyan’s curious student body outdid all of them.

I think most people in the world would like to be like that, except for the fact that they have limiting beliefs and low self-esteem that is preventing their true flourishing.

You deserve to flourish. No “I can’t”, no “I won’t”. I’ll help you.

The Idea that the Road Less Travelled is Actually the Better Career Choice

A lot of insecurity pervaded people at Wesleyan, given how many jokes were told about liberal arts majors and how a lot of us were probably headed to unemployment directly after graduating.

But interestingly, what the education really did (for me, at least) was that it enabled me to become dynamic. It enabled me to see opportunities, not only related to employment and financial gain, but everything else, on a consistent basis.

A lot of people from other universities probably found themselves sucked into more predictable paths. I didn’t. I’m very glad that I didn’t, even though a lot of pain and self-doubt sprinkled the way to my current path.

People on predictable paths don’t tend to shake things up, plainly put. And you, regardless of where you went to school (or even if you didn’t) still have the possibility to live your dream life, just by thinking differently!

To Embrace a Quirky Personality While Maintaining a Social Contract

A lot of people are truly afraid of expressing who they really are. A lot of people at Wesleyan were not afraid of expressing who they really were.

A lot of personality showing is discouraged the world over, especially on the “way up”.

I could have gone somewhere else and become more conformist. I could have said fewer jokes or tried to reference pop culture more often or watch and consume the same media as many other people.

Instead, I decided to emphasize who made me different, knowing that I was the main character of the novel that is my life. I wanted that character to be memorable, funny and an experience-collector. Wesleyan enabled me to come to the realization that it was not only what I wanted, but that I wasn’t alone in wanting it.

The effect of the peer group at Wesleyan University was very, very powerful. And I am grateful for it every day.

Realizing that Taking in Wisdom from Multiple Fields is infinitely better than narrow focus

This is a big one, and one that served as a “gift that kept on giving” later on down the line. In my classes, I learned to apply various forms of wisdom from one discipline to another. In my professional life, I can notice patterns in successful projects and apply them in a completely different manner in projects of a completely different nature.

More simply put, even something like successful video game design can teach me about how to be a good teacher (e.g. knowing how the mind works and using that to create a more engaging class).

I took on a lot of projects throughout the years, including:

Concert Pianist

Educational YouTube Channel

Let’s Play YouTube Channel

Synagogue Cantor

Karaoke Master

Celeglot (Celebrity + Polyglot)

Language Teacher

History Teacher

Preschool teacher (when I was in Poland…don’t ask!)

Translator

Video Game Designer

Tabletop Game Designer

Comic Book Author (Really!)

Novelist

Blogger

Person who draws cute baby seals for a living (Okay, maybe I was joking…or was I?)

You can guess that I got a lot of experiences from all of these. What’s more, I gained wisdom from each and that wisdom strengthened all of my collective projects.d

Concluding Thoughts

Higher Education serves a sinister purpose at times. It crushed my confidence significantly. It serves to convince us that we have no choice but to be smaller than who or what we really are. What’s more, some educational systems have poisonous ideas in place to further competition, and the fact that the Dean’s List came to Wesleyan University during my last year was an extraordinarily bad idea.

It serves to create conformity, to really convince you that you’re not good enough and that obedience and learning to think like your teachers is the most important thing.

I’m not going to lie, Wesleyan did have these ills present from Prussian-style education systems as well. A lot of those ills did significant harm to me and continue to do so, but that’s a post for another time.

But hey, grades (whether they’re good or not) and whatever social standing you had in college (whether that was good or not) matter very little to you when you’re a 20+ language hyperpolyglot with the admiration of your friends, community and beyond, so there’s that.

That said, I realize that degrees are very valuable for career-building and connection-making, and Wesleyan did a very good job and minimizing a lot of the necessary evils of our conformist educational system.

What’s more, I wouldn’t have become a truly exploratory soul without the people I met there and the environment fostered there.

And despite everything, I’d like to ask for forgiveness and say thank you.

Yes, I know, polyglots don’t play favorites. Or at least that’s what we say we should do. I’ve noticed with great consistency that polyglots get attached to certain sets of languages a lot more than the rest of the group.

For example: I have a greater affinity to Jewish, Nordic, Celtic and Pacific Languages than I do global languages like German, French or Spanish. I have friends that focus on Balkan languages, Central Asian languages, Official Languages of the UN, Germanic Languages, languages of East Asia, and too many other types to list.

Today I’ll write about the five languages (note that I do not say “language learning journeys”) that changed my life the most.

And if I were to write a post about “The five language learning JOURNEYS that changed my life the most”, that would result in something different. The reason? Because the processes you undertake during a journey is very different from the benefits you reap from it. These discuss the benefits.

Krio

“Jared, I don’t want you to learn this language. It makes you sound like an idiot.”

That’s what someone said to me once about two years ago when I was discussing my parents’ journeys in Sierra Leone and the conversation turned to Krio and how to learn it.

Suffice it to say that I was not of that opinion in the slightest, aware of the fact that my parents needed interpreters at times when they were in up-country Sierra Leone.

Learning Krio truly enabled me to understand African-American culture in ways that I hadn’t before (this may surprise some of you that don’t know it, but the African-American culture in the US, the Afro-Caribbean Culture on the Islands [and places like Belize and Guyana], and the Krio culture of places like Sierra Leone and Liberia are actually linked to each other and have ties of solidarity and cultural mindsets).

Elements from Krio and its relatives from these three areas I mentioned entered American English not only in its informal registers but also its sentence structure. “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” is one such sentence that may have Krio influence, as a speaker of Krio would say “na ya a deh tok!” And, of course, we haven’t even discussed jazz jive, which exhibits way too many elements from Krio as well as native African languages to list coherently

The proverbs and idioms are also extremely colorful (as they are in all languages in the world and Creole languages especially).

In listening to Salone Krio speakers on YouTube, they find themselves poised between many aspects of their identity that they describe in a heartfelt matter, including the Civil War in recent memory, the hope of the country moving forward, as well as the solidarity ties to their cultural cousins on the other side of the pond (and in the rest of Africa as well).

The people of Sierra Leone seem to carry an extraordinary fortitude that someone like me can’t possibly understand, and my parents also remarked on the collective cultural work ethic and willingness to hang on as something that continues to inspire them to this day!

Krio speakers in the past century or so have been emphatic in making their language a symbol of Sierra Leone as well as a language that wasn’t just seen as “broken” or “mislearned”. You can even access Google Search in Salone Krio as well! (google.sl and press “Krio”)

Also one of my favorite rappers, who lays down a lot of realities and pains of the developing world, Bone na Throat, is very much worth checking out! (He uses Krio and English, not also to mention his performances alongside guest stars from other parts of Africa).

Modern Hebrew

I knew Ancient Hebrew as a child, and when I saw what happened to it as a result of one Eliezer ben-Yehuda and millions of determined people, I was stunned.

For one, my previous knowledge of English and Russian made it clear how much foreign influence was present in Modern Hebrew, right down to the verb structure.

But despite that, the charm of Hebrew that one can feel from reading the Hebrew Bible in the original is still kept very much intact. The verb system is not only kept in place but expanded upon to as to include words related to SMS and Facebook, among many other things.

(For those unaware: Semitic languages use a system in which a set of consonants form the basis for a verb stem. These letters, known as the root word or “shoresh” in Hebrew, will dance around in various forms that differ in terms of activity / passivity, as well as in verbs-turned-to-nouns. “l’kabel” is to accept, “kabbalah” is something accepted, which is not only the name for the Jewish mystical tradition [accepted from a divine source] but also a receipt you would get in an Israeli store).

Hebrew’s development found parallels in my own life story, in which my mannerisms and even my accent (not to mention my personality) changed as a result of hopping around the world. Jews hopped around the world as well, and Modern Hebrew, with its abundant influent from Slavic languages, English, French and many others, shows it, all while retaining its primeval charm.

Greenlandic

A language with HUNDREDS of suffixes! The hardest language I have attempted to date! And, then as well as now, my overall favorite language of them all!

Greenlandic, above all, was different. No other language I have studied (with the obvious exception of the closely-related Inuktitut) has worked in a similar manner.

It confounded me to no end. I had dreams of becoming fluent but no matter what, it seemed that understanding the radio or a lot of songs was always out of reach. And my writing abilities were in the trash (and sometimes they still are).

However, I decided that I was going to do SOMETHING. And the decision to do something , however small, with consistency—it edged me closer and closer to gaining a vocabulary that will probably serve me well during my trip to Greenland in October 2017.

What’s more, the culture I gained insight into actually inspired me to make my first video game, “Kaverini: Nuuk Adventures”. That’s not nothing!

I’d say more about it, but there’s only so much I can spoil for a product I haven’t released yet, right?

Tok Pisin

Up until I studied Tok Pisin, the languages I had studied in my life had been tongues of the developed world. Tok Pisin changed all that, and in encountering it I felt that I had encountered a time capsule.

The world that was captured in the cultures of PNG felt stuck between the present and whatever our ancestors were before many forms of technology made (and continue to make) our genuinely human side closed off to us.

Tok Pisin taught me how to be a human again, how to think in a language that was minimalistic yet expressive, and also gave me access to a culture that knows all too well that we are poised on a precipice in which either our desire for profit or our humanity will win (the time is not too far off in which we cannot have both!)

It also showed me that, even if I never intend to visit “the country”, I can feel a great resonance with “the culture” from a distance, sometimes even stronger than for countries that I had actually visited once!

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Irish

Ah yes, a language more commonly used by non-fluent speakers than by native speakers…or that’s how it seemed to me when I first encountered the way Irish is used on the internet.

Given how many non-natives were using it enthusiastically online and in speech, the many usages of the Irish language, from those who speak a handful of sentences to full-on TV shows and YouTube series, has captivated me. The Irish-Language sphere on the internet is one of enthusiasm and acceptance, one that many other language learning communities, endangered or not, should take note to emulate.

Trinidadian English Creole

My first language with no standardized writing system, it truly made me think about code switching more deeply than in any other language. Trinis will often shift between standard English and Trini Creole very quickly, and listening to informal radio programs with a substandard knowledge of the latter requires you to be on your toes.

What’s more, this was a language I chose in part because I live in Crown Heights (and I’m writing this article from there). I learned this language enough to have conversations in it, and suddenly my neighborhood came to life in a way I didn’t even think possible (although my knowledge of other Caribbean Creoles, such as Vincentian, Grenadian, or Jamaican, remain weak as of the time of writing).

Finnish

The language everyone tried to tell me was impossible. Finnish made me think about how distinct formal and informal language can be. The various “grammar games” that are played in Finnish’s more informal registers made it easy for me to switch from the colloquial variety to a formal one. A useful skill to have if you ever want to learn, let’s say, East Asian languages in great depth.

Finnish music can be heart-wrenching, but also some of the edgiest music I’ve ever heard, one that truly causes me to embrace my darkness and fuel it into my missions of peacemaking and bridge-building. The great pride that many Finnish speakers take in their culture and language is also something that profoundly affected me, and it made me realize that all cultures and languages have it—they just sometimes need more coaxing to get it out and fully expressed.

AND #1…

YIDDISH

I bet none of you is surprised at all right now, right?

Yiddish was the first language I became fluent in as an adult, and for the rest of my life it seems that I will be of the opinion that it is an excellent choice for the first language I definitively mastered. (That said, I’m still learning new things about it and at times, if I’m rusty on practice, I’ll slip up, but given that I do that in English too…I’m okay with that, I guess…)

Yiddish showed me that a language could be a community.

Yiddish showed me that a language could echo a culture in ways that reading from a guidebook or even holy texts just couldn’t.

Yiddish showed me that a language can serve for a depository of cultural memories, as “Yiddish-Taytsch” wandered off further East, picking up words along the way from Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, and many others. The people groups you encounter rub off on you (as an individual AND as a nation), and that became clear with the story of Yiddish.

What’s more, the enthusiasm of the Yiddishist community all throughout the world is, I have to say it, unmatched.

The songs and stories of the Old Country are coming back to life, even among non-Hasidic Jews.

Certainly there may be some light tension (or sometimes not-so-light tension) between the secular and religious Yiddish speakers, but hey, when it comes down to it, we’re all “Klal Yisroel” in a sense (even if you happen to be a gentile Yiddish speaker, I would say! The time wasn’t long ago in which even non-Jewish Yiddish speakers were honorary Jews, as well as non-Yiddish speaking Jews as an oddity)

Yiddish showed me what the true prize of fluency in a language is, and even when I wasn’t fluency, I was still getting plenty of prizes. Yiddish made me a better Jew and a better human being through its proverbs, songs and, above all, the community and friends that I’ve acquired through this fascinating tongue that will probably not only remain with me throughout my life, but I hope to raise my children speaking it one day! (Of course they’ll have other languages, too!)

Few cartoon series have been localized as widely as the journeys of Ash Ketchum and his many friends. In addition to the usual advantages of using TV series to learn languages (patterns and repetition are essential in creating a space for your target language in your brain), the Pokémon Anime also endows a number of unique quirks that are definitely worth mentioning.

If you came here to find a listicle, you’re absolutely right!

The Cartoons are Available for Free Online

On The Pokémon Company’s official website, as of the time of writing, you can access the site in the following languages: English, Spanish (EU), French, Italian, German, Russian, Portuguese (Brazil), Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish. (There is also the Japanese site as well but I can’t really access the site map aside from a Pokémon Go download link as of the time of writing).

You can use the versions of the site in order to access (from anywhere in the world, mind you) not only various episodes of the anime but also various flash games that are completely localized in all of these languages. There are other features on the site as well, and obviously in the bigger languages the site is more complete (with a Pokédex available in some of these languages).

Furthermore, the content and layout of the anime episodes will vary depending on language and sometimes they “rotate”, so when you access the site on different days or weeks you’ll get different episodes.

To access the website in these languages, just type in “pokemon.com/XX”, where XX is one of the letter codes: ES (Spanish), BR (Portuguese), DE (German), FR (French), IT (Italian), RU (Russian), NL (Dutch), SE (Swedish), NO (Norwegian), DK (Danish) and FI (Finnish). Pokemon.com takes you to the English version of the site.

Once you’re on the site, click on the TV icon and have fun! (Or you can fiddle around and browse all the while).

If you are not learning one of those languages, you can also access, via YouTube or other sites, the anime in the following languages (and probably many more, depending on where in the world you are): Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Latin Spanish, Portuguese (EU), Czech and Romanian. (If I missed any, let me know in the comments. I know that the anime is sometimes localized into languages such as Greek, Hebrew, Cantonese, Mandarin and Japanese, but I can’t find any depositories of them online, although sometimes the Pokémon movies are available in all of the languages listed on this page with more ease. Sometimes these movies will be available on the websites).

The Speed of the Dialogue is Perfect for a Beginner-to-Intermediate Learner

This was oddly consistent throughout a lot of the localizations of the anime, as well as the English Dub.

What’s also very odd about the speed is that speaking at the speed that many of the characters do in the Pokémon anime is actually completely natural for a native speaker.

While learning Hebrew, Russian and Spanish in high school and college, one extraordinary hurdle I had was that I was addressed in low-speed “Learnerese” a lot of the time. Then thrown into the real world of these languages, I really didn’t know how to speak like anything natural. The same was true with most of the teachers that addressed me as well (although there were noteworthy exceptions).

One thing I really liked about the Pokémon TV show in various languages was that it presented the perfect speed for a learner that was anywhere between beginner and intermediate. It wasn’t too slow, but it also was just the right speed that was suitable for a conversation.

Granted, there are some more challenging parts, primarily the Team Rocket Motto (which is probably the most difficult portion for learners to understand), but above all most of the dialogue should be at a manageable speed for you.

And even if you don’t understand it, the Pokémon anime can still be helpful for a learner because…

The Pokémon Anime is Rich is Visual Context Clues

When Team Rocket talks about their plans to capture Pikachu, often you’ll notice that a significant amount of illustrations and animated visuals accompany their plan. You can actually use this in order to make out what is happening even if you really don’t have a clue what’s being said.

Keep in mind, kids learn their first languages with the aids of cartoons like these, and these visual cues help them…and that means they can also help you!

Another example in which visual cues are also used is when Ash and his friends encounter a landscape or a cityscape or a colony of Pokemon (among many other things). You’ll also notice that every member of Ash’s party often remarks on what is being said. Pay attention to these short phrases. They’ll be extremely useful throughout your language learning journey.

Also, during battles, note that some key words are also repeated at key actions, as well as various words and styles used depending on what emotions the characters are feeling. Anime is very rich in expressing people’s emotions across many different lines, so that should also help.

Speaking of battles…

In Some Localizations and Seasons, the names of Pokémon and their Techniques will be in English. Use this for accent training.

In Japanese, Chinese, Korean, French and German, the Pokémon’s names will be localized. In all other languages they will use the English versions of the Pokémon names, and in the Nordic dubs in the later seasons the techniques will also be recited in English (although the names of the Pokémon types are NEVER localized).

You can use this to your advantage if you really want to train your accent in these languages if you pay attention to the quirks in how these English names and words are pronounced by the voice actors.

If you’re a native English speaker, pay attention to pronunciations that may sound strange to you. Even in the Nordic dubs I’ve caught a handful of complicated Latinate technique names being butchered, although examples escape me.

Interestingly, in comparison to casual speech in many of these languages, the dubs are significantly low on English loan words (the way that German or Dutch in particular tend to use them very often). You may be able to snag one once in a while, even in languages like Portuguese and Russian in which Anglicisms are rarer than in languages like Norwegian.

The Pokemon Anime Provides a Plethora of Stimuli that Can Serve as Memory Techniques

If you hear a phrase or a word you need to remember, you’re going to forget it easily unless you find something to “connect” it with. It could be a funny incident involving the word, it could be a story involving the word, or you could associate it with your environment or feelings at the time.

(This is why learning the language in an immersive environment is so helpful.)

The Anime provides memorable characters in the Pokémon themselves, as well as a host of settings and music tracks that you can connect to the phrases you’re taking in.

And we haven’t even touched on the possibility that you can also connect various words and phrases to plot points in the story. Not also to mention you can do what kids do: re-watch your favorite episodes endlessly (again, this is how kids learn their first language!)

Various Portions have No Dialogue at all (or Dialogue in Pokémon Speech). Use This Time to Reflect on What Words You’ve Heard and How to Internalize Them.

One thing that can be frustrating about watching Pokémon in a language you’re learning is that sometimes the action shifts to having the cute monsters hop around the screen or just looking at landscapes or, true to anime fashion, just having characters look at each other with menacing stares (in addition to many other down-time situations that I haven’t touched on!)

Use this time in order to develop memory techniques to fully internalize any words you’ve learned earlier on in the episode.

Also, if you’re having trouble picking up words, feel free to type something that sounds like it into Google Translate or another dictionary thing. It will usually correct you, especially if it is a phonetic language. Otherwise, if you don’t have a translator, you can use context clues. This is especially helpful if you’ve seen the episode before in a language you understand better.

Conclusion

One of the most successful animated cartoon shows in history can be used as a learning tool with surprising efficiency, given its ability to weave words with storylines and illustrations. The episodes themselves are perfect for a learner seeking to make his or her way out of the “language learner material ghetto” (as All Japanese All the Time refers to it as).

I should mention that I don’t have a lot of experience using this show with East Asian Languages given that my East Asian Languages that I’m working on ever-so-slightly (Burmese and Lao) don’t have localizations (as far as I know).

So if you’ve had experience doing that, let me know what I missed out on! Part of me thinks it may not all be that different!

A new polyglot video is coming soon and its production is within sight! So therefore, given that I want to return to the world of video-making with an experience you will remember (I think maybe three / four videos a year would probably be a good benchmark of my progress unless one of my creation goes COMPLETELY viral), time for me to rate myself.

So that you know, I’m going to be as RUTHLESS as possible with myself and expose my weaknesses to their core. At the same time, I am going to realize that (1) there is always room for improvement, even in one’s native language(s) and (2) this is, in part, to expose my vulnerability (which a lot of Internet polyglots, I fear, tend to not do).

I am going to be featuring a total of 36 languages in this video, and I believe it will be the first-ever polyglot video to feature languages native to every continent (except for Antarctica).

Yes, I have studied MANY other languages besides, but I’ll be focusing on these in order to maintain my sanity and cover enough material within a reasonable time limit.

Yes, the last three are very recent additions and, while they are not going by very swimmingly and require some work, I know I’ll be able to include small bits of them in the video (and I’m not talking about “good luck” or “bye-bye” like in my last one, but complete sentences). One reason I made my March 2017 video so short was because I thought that it would match with people’s attention spans. Ah well. At least it was good enough for a first try.

Anyhow, time for me to get graded. Biggest Strength, Biggest Weakness, Accent, Grammar, and Future Course of Action before I film the video.

English

Biggest Strength: It’s my native language (despite what you may have heard, read or believed). I’ve had a lot of exposure to it throughout my life and I can easily use idioms and cultural references with ease. I’m so good at speaking English (even by native speaker standards) that often I have to train myself to simplify my thought patterns for languages that often required more direct methods of communication (French, Burmese, Bislama, etc.)

Biggest Weakness: Thanks to me having avoided English-language media for years now in order to raise my skills in other languages, sometimes my spoken English has detectable traces of influence from other languages. Sometimes I even find myself talking in Nordic accents without even realizing it, as well as expressions and grammatical pieces from English Creole Languages. (NOTE: Do not let this serve as any discouragement from learning English Creole Languages! American, Hiberno- and Caribbean forms of English are 110% legitimate versions of the language that came about through similar influences as well and also have traces of other people’s native languages present throughout! Maybe the same could also be said about…any language anywhere!)

Accent: I need to sound more American sometimes rather than something “international”. I pull it off with my family well enough, but sometimes I have to get myself to deliberately sound “lazier” in order to not get the “where are you from? You have an accent” spiel.

Grammar: My sentence structure also shifts sometimes to something more distinctly German or Romance-Language oriented. Sometimes this makes me sound like a foreigner and I would obviously catch it in editing. I really need to stop this.

Future course of Action: Just be cognizant of when I make mistakes and try to avoid them in the future. This will certainly be an interesting topic to write about in the future.

Danish

Biggest Strength: Where do I start? I’m very good at reading and understanding things seldom becomes an issue for me. Yes, I can’t pick up “every word” as clearly as I could with Norwegian or Swedish but I can’t even do that with English a lot of the time either. You see, this is a problem a lot of novice language learners have. They judge their L2 to a higher standard than the one they have for their native languages. Please, be aware of when you do this. My biggest strength? I’ve finally gotten over the understanding hurdle, and it’s been years since I’ve done it and I’m getting better. Those of who you have studied Danish know exactly how much of a pain this can really be.

Biggest Weakness: In speaking, I think I need to use idioms and expressions more often, although going through a 16,000+ word Danish – English dictionary on Anki certainly is helping. What’s more, I need to be VERY cognizant of slip-ups when it comes to vowel shifts, especially as far as the infamous letter a is concerned (the Danish a is often pronounced like a short-a sound like in “bat”, English also has a similar quality. This actually makes Danish more approachable to native English speakers who have never spoken any other language aside from English before).

Accent: I’ve been told that my accent is fantastic. But sometimes when shifting very quickly from another Nordic Language to Danish (or from any language to Danish, period), I need to take a second or two to get my pronunciation “sounding right”. That, and singing has really done significant wonders for my accent, especially since the beginning (which is the hardest part, esp. with Danish)

Grammar: No glaring issues that I can think of.

Future course of Action: I need to sing more! Out loud! And talk to myself more often when I’m using Danish to study (e.g. while reading a text for research or using Anki)

Swedish

Biggest Strength: Why couldn’t I be like this in Sweden? Took me years to get here, but Swedish is now solidly one of my strongest languages. My Swedish-American heritage propelled me into this journey with a sense of purpose and, while I still haven’t read the letters in Swedish from my deceased family members, I know 110% I’d be able to talk to them (if I…ever had the opportunity to have spoken to them…). I can use idioms, synonoms, a wide variety of words and put them together in a way in which my personality genuinely comes through. If that isn’t fluency, nothing is.

Biggest Weakness: Two things (1) sometimes I flub pronunciation of a word once or twice (although rarely) and (2) sometimes I let some of my negative experiences with the Swedish language (e.g. having had native speakers once or twice refuse to speak to me in Swedish or otherwise treat me not very nicely) attach themselves to me even though I shouldn’t. I should know better than that to realize that I’m not that insecure beginner anymore! But sometimes my emotional core sometimes likes to think that I am, despite the fact that on some days I use Swedish for 4-6 hours.

Accent: Not the Finland-Swedish I was talking when I was living there, that’s for sure (although Finland-Swedish is finally growing on me!). I think it’s a really good job and the worst I’ve ever gotten within the past year is being asked if I spent a significant amount of time in Norway / if I’m Norwegian (and, once or twice, being switch to Norwegian on, but I’m okay with that, of course!)

Grammar: Very few, if any. Had trouble for a while as to exactly when to use the word “fast” (too difficult to explain in a single sentence), but that’s been dealt with.

Future course of Action: Mindfulness. I have to let my bad memories go. And stay gone. Otherwise, I’m gonna keep on doing what I’m doing. Come a long way.

Norwegian

Biggest Strength: I got a lot of exposure to this language with television and as a result my knowledge of the culture and general patterns is very, very sharp. My exposure to this language on YouTube ensures that I can pepper my speech with idioms and a very natural flow.

Biggest Weakness: I have trouble reading very complicated and specialized texts. Casual dialogue is not a problem for me, ever. Also Norwegian is probably my weakest of the Scandinavian Mainland Trio, by virtue of the fact that I’ve interacted with Norwegian speakers the least. I sometimes have issue understanding dialects that are not Oslo or Sami.

Accent: Sometimes I think I sound like a cartoon character. Been told that my accent places me squarely in Eastern Norway. Good. That’s what I want.

Grammar: Some arcane forms of pasts and plurals that I’ve heard referenced in some songs are things I need to gain more familiarity with. Aside from that, very few issues.

Future course of Action: I literally haven’t watched Norwegian TV all year and I need to do it more often. Not YouTube. Go on NRK and watch stuff.

Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea)

Biggest Strength: I can understand radio broadcasts and television with extraordinary ease. I could even transcribe a lot of it!

Biggest Weakness: Understanding the language as used by locals in documentaries can be possible but sometimes is a bit of a problem. The fact that I haven’t had a lot of practice with the spoken language, while I use it with my family members (regardless of whether or not they understand it), needs to be accounted for.

Accent: Yes, I can imitate a lot of people who sing and who present on TV or on podcasts, but I think my Tok Pisin accent needs something to make it sound less American. Difficult to say what.

Grammar: Bislama and Pijin have more prepositions and I have to be conscious to avoid their usage in Tok Pisin. Which I usually do.

Future course of Action: Watch PNG documentaries where Tok Pisin is featured. Otherwise, hey…maybe speaking the official variety as used in the programs described above isn’t a bad thing at all! More reading practice would also be good.

Yiddish

Biggest Strength: The one language I’ve spent the most time with being fluent. I’m committed, its a language that echoes with me and it shows on every level.

Biggest Weakness: Still have some Yinglish here and there, although rarely. I also really want it to be more idiomatic, referencing well-known phrases and proverbs. And by “well-known phrases” I don’t mean “bible verses”. Sometimes it takes me a while to “switch” into fluent Yiddish from English (and by “ a while” I mean “ a few seconds”)

Accent: Some people really like it, saying that it sounds like the true Yiddish of the Lithuanian Yeshives. Others think is sounds too close to German or thinks that it sounds “strange”. Non-native speakers, especially from secular institutions, love it.

Grammar: Sometimes I make stupid mistakes, although never in my classes, thankfully. This only happens when I’m switching languages really quickly.

Future course of Action: Keep going through my comprehensive Anki list (it is 7000+ words). Has a lot of words that would make my language sound more natural than it already is.

Hebrew

Biggest Strength: I have a lot of cultural resonance with the Hebrew language, given that it (along with French) were the first ones I was exposed to as a child alongside English. My knowledge of Biblical quotes is top-notch (which is surprisingly useful in conversation and rhetoric in Hebrew), as well as my knowledge of prayers. I also know a lot about the culture and mentality in general, more than anywhere else aside from the US.

Biggest Weakness: However, there are gaps in my vocabulary as far as purisms go, and if there weren’t Yiddish’s Hebrew words (that were taken back into Modern Hebrew in the days of Zionism) in the equation, it would be a lot worse off. I’m good conversationally but there’s something missing in comparison to the way I speak Swedish or German or Tok Pisin. That something is an extended vocabulary of abstract nouns.

Accent: Good enough to fool the staff members at Ben Gurion. That was 2015. I’m even better now.

Grammar: The Binyanim are second-nature to me, which presents interesting problems when I’m trying to…well…explain how they work. Fun fact: native Hebrew speakers get disqualified from teaching their native language because they “crash and burn” while being asked to explain binyanim, not also to mention that colloquial speech also bypasses a lot of complicated verb forms as well as using grammatically incorrect forms (much like English speakers in this country!)

Future course of Action: I’m supposed to be programming this list of 10,000 most common Hebrew words into Anki. Unfortunately I have to edit the list to make it consistent and I’m not making steady progress with it. Israeli TV shows would also really help me with my vocabulary gaps. While I don’t need the subtitles at ALL to understand it, maybe I should use them from English (or even another language!) just in case I need to gain an extra degree of wisdom in the translation business.

German

Biggest Strength: Thanks to the Kauderwelsch series, I’ve read more German than literally any other language on this list (barring various forms of Hebrew). I can watch Let’s Play Videos online and follow them consistently, my passive vocabulary is huge. Lots of people, native speakers and otherwise, think that I do a good job. Yeah, if only I could have been this good…when I was living there!

Biggest Weakness: Gender shenaningans, issues with some relative pronouns (a sentence like “The cities in which I have lived” can present some problems for me, and by “problems” I mean “hold on a moment”)

Accent: I speak like I’m from the South of Germany thanks to my guilty pleasure of watching Domtendo on a weekly basis. Somehow thinks that it needs some fine-tuning, although I don’t know how or why. Maybe it sounds too Scandinavian sometimes.

Grammar: What’s more, sometimes I have to correct my grammar errors in German but I do the same in English too. I would say that my German grammar is mostly acceptable.

Future course of Action: The relative pronouns need fixing in this regard. Also playing video games in German with more complicated vocabulary sets would really help me.

Finnish

Biggest Strength: I’m really used to spicing up my Finnish so that it doesn’t sound like a textbook. I also have a broad knowledge of Finnish morphology

Biggest Weakness: I have the reverse problem with Hebrew—I know a lot of abstract nouns but often names of material things can elude me at times.

Accent: I’ve noticed that my accent tends to sound like one of the last five Finnish-language voices I heard last. Aside from that, I would say it is good although I have trouble imitating Finnish-accented English.

Grammar: Good in regards to colloquial speech, could use work in regards to the written language. Given that I mostly want to use Finnish to engage with the popular culture, part of me is okay with the dynamicI have now.

Future course of Action: I guess I’ll have to speed through that Anki list of 22000 Finnish words now, won’t I? Any way I could randomize it? Or I could do the less intensive thing and use clozemaster. Television would also be good but part of me worries exactly how much time I’ll have to practice langauges with it.

Spanish (EU)

Biggest Strength: The one official EU language I can read best! It’s obviously the doing of video games.

Biggest Weakness: I sometimes feel self-conscious to talk to native speakers, given how I’m haunted by past memories of screwing up this language and feeling like a failure when attempting it. Sometimes I don’t e even tell native speakers that I know it!

Accent: Irritiatingly Peninsular, which causes Spaniards to swoon and a host of reactions from Latino Spanish speakers, ranging from “so cool!” to “huh? I can’t understand anything…”

Grammar: Only a handful of knots in irregular verbs.

Future course of Action: I’ve tried and tried to find a way to improve and seldom does “more TV” or “more Anki” or “more Clozemaster” actually do anything. I think it’s a mindfulness thing and I don’t really know how to push away my bad memories. Sometimes they were so bad that I literally gave up the language three times. This sadly resulted in me having gone to a Puerto Rican New Year’s Party and me being unable to understand a lot of what was being said. What got me back into it? Let’s Play Videos in Spanish. That’s what. Oh, and video games in general.

Breton

Biggest Strength: Casual conversation goes by well when I get the chance to use it. Although given the level of Breton speakers I’ve encountered in the past few months, this isn’t a very high standards. I have a friend of mine who is in an intensive Breton language program right now! Hopefully we’ll be able to hone each other’s skills upon his return!

Biggest Weakness: Reading.

Accent: Good enough, I guess.

Grammar: My one blind spot is verb conjugation, and maybe some forms of mutation (for those unaware: Celtic languages have some initial letters of words change under certain circumstances, this is called “mutation”)

Future course of Action: The reading-with-the-glosses procedure I outlined many posts ago (split an article into sentences, look up the words you don’t know, read the article aloud and translate it into your native language).

Bislama (Vanuatu)

Biggest Strength: Can understand almost anything spoken in it.

Biggest Weakness: While I can speak it very well, Bislama has a rich array of exclamations and I haven’t mastered anywhere close to all of them.

Accent: Good, or acceptable at the absolute least.

Grammar: Mastered.

Future course of Action: listen to the Radio more often in Bislama

Pijin (Solomon Islands)

Biggest Strength: Can understand almost everything spoken in it

Biggest Weakness: Sometimes I sound too proper (in using too many English words).

Accent: Good, I think.

Grammar: Mastered

Future course of Action: use YouTube to watch stuff in Pijin more often, the Radio, especially in Honiara, is primarily English.

Irish

Biggest Strength: My accent is very good. That’s what Irish people have told me.

Biggest Weakness: The spoken language, especially outside of Connemara, can elude me. Some verb forms could use work.

Accent: Very good, according to Irish people.

Grammar: Good enough for converseation, but I need to get many other verb forms under my belt to go from good to great.

Future course of Action: Find fun stuff to do in Irish and do it, but it has to involve listening.

Cornish

Biggest Strength: My listening abilities. I can understand a great deal of my favorite Cornish podcasts without a sweat!

Biggest Weakness: I do have trouble understanding songs in Cornish, however, and my grammar needs work.

Accent: Good? Okay? Questionable?

Grammar: I. Need. Work. With. This. Verbs can be a mess especially as well as prepositions. Oh, and like Hebrew and the other Celtic languages, prepositions change if it matches a person.

Future course of Action: Speaking exercises about myself.

Polish

Biggest Strength: My pronunciation is good and I can make things flow a good amount of the time until I get tripped up.

Accent: All over the board. I’ve heard that it is mostly good, however.

Grammar: Verbs need work.

Future course of Action: Clozemaster and Duolingo for verbs, look at table after table and also that gloss exercise couldn’t hurt you.

Portuguese (both EU and BR)

Biggest Strength: Can read very well.

Biggest Weakness: Have trouble speaking. Thanks to the fact that I don’t have much of a cultural resonance with any Lusophone country (the way I do with many of my better languages…see a pattern?), I lapse frequently into Portuñol.

Accent: Okay to good, based on feedback.

Grammar: Surprisingly not too weak.

Future course of Action: Watch cartoons, get songs, find things to like about Lusophonecountries and movies and what-have-you.

Dutch (Netherlands)

Biggest Strength: A lot of casual phrases make me sound like I speak the language better than I do.

Biggest Weakness: I can’t read it very well.

Accent: I don’t think it is that good.

Grammar: Gaps with irregular verbs.

Future course of Action: Between reading and singing, all of your weaknesses would go away.

Welsh (Southern)

Biggest Strength: I have a convincing accent.

Biggest Weakness: Vocabulary gaps and virtually no good knowledge of verbs. Questions can pose a problem.

Accent: Convincing.

Grammar: Verbs need work.

Future course of Action: Reading things would help, as well Duolingo but only with verb-related or question-related skills.

Ukrainian

Biggest Strength: My accent can be good.

Biggest Weakness: Literally everything else.

Accent: The one good thing I have.

Grammar: Okay, I lied, the second good thing I have.

Future course of Action: I have issues when I speak and often I have to go slowly. Films haven’t really helped much so I’ve enlisted Mango Languages’ Ukrainian to help me. Maybe more Duolingo would help too. Maybe I should spend more time with language-learning materials before I try immersion again.

Russian

Biggest Strength: I can say a significant amount of basic phrases convincingly.

Biggest Weakness: Consistent vocabulary gaps.

Accent: I’ve been told it is good.

Grammar: Learning it for that one year in college was good for something. I’d say “decent”

Future course of Action: Anki + Songs + Clozemaster.

Italian

Biggest Strength: I can understand and read a lot of it.

Biggest Weakness: My active skills are usually trash unless I have had a lot of exposure in the previous days.

Accent: Good, I’ve heard.

Grammar: Inconsistent.

Future course of Action: Let’s Play Videos are not working, but maybe if I watch cartoons in Italian, they MIGHT…work…

Faroese

Biggest Strength: Pronunciation isn’t an issue.

Biggest Weakness: Haven’t rehearsed in a while and forgot a lot of it.

Accent: Decent, I think

Grammar: Needs work.

Future course of Action: Use Memrise to help you get back on your toes, and use Faroese music to job your memory a bit.

Northern Sami

Biggest Strength: Pronunciation isn’t an issue.

Biggest Weakness: Everything that isn’t basic phrases.

Accent: O…kay?

Grammar: Tons of gaps.

Future course of Action: See how much you can remember from watching the TV shows in Northern Sami you used to watch before you decided to drop it.

Burmese

Biggest Strength: I have a good grasp of the grammar.

Biggest Weakness: I can’t read too well + my tones need work

Accent: Okay for a foreigner, I think.

Grammar: Good.

Future course of Action: Read through all of my books, recite everything outloud and, where there is Burmese script (because not all of my books have it), write it out.

Estonian

Biggest Strength: I’m good at casual speaking at a basic level.

Biggest Weakness: The letter õ, comprehension and reading issues.

Accent: All over the board.

Grammar: Good, thanks to Finnish.

Future course of Action: Songs, cartoons, reading.

Hungarian

Biggest Strength: My accent is good and pronunciation is not an issue.

Biggest Weakness: I don’t know the cases too well and there are very predictable vocabulary gaps.

Accent: Good to very good.

Grammar: LOL

Future course of Action:Tried immersion once, didn’t work too well, should probably go through book dialogues and simple sentences at this juncture. Mango Languages is also deployed.

Krio (Sierra Leone)

Biggest Strength: I can understand a lot!

Biggest Weakness: Need less English-language content when I speak to sound genuine. I also forget key words every now and then. But hey, I started a month ago!

Accent: I think it’s good.

Grammar: Decent

Future course of Action: I have this Peace Corps book and all of the words in the glossary should be put into a flash card program without any second thought to it.

Tajik

Biggest Strength: I can pronounce things.

Biggest Weakness: Everything else.

Accent: I think it’s either good or silly.

Grammar: I can do possessives…! …?

Future course of Action: You have a book. You have grammar guides. Go through the grammar guides. Form sentences about yourself when you can.

Tahitian

Biggest Strength: I began last week.

Biggest Weakness: I’m still a beginner.

Accent: Coming to terms with it.

Grammar: Needs work.

Future course of Action: Just keep going!

Guarani (Jopara)

Biggest Strength: My pronunciation is good.

Biggest Weakness: I literally cannot form sentences.

Accent: Interesting to good to consistent.

Grammar: LOL

Future course of Action: Prepare a stump-speech about yourself. Somehow.

Tigrinya

Biggest Strength: I just began today!

Biggest Weakness: Yeah, who are you, do you expect me to say “NO WEAKNESSES” on day 1? Really?

Accent: Needs significant work.

Grammar: LOLOLOLOLOLOL

Future course of Action: Invest in free books and YouTube Tutorials.

So, to lay out my recipes in short:

English: Just be cognizant of when I make mistakes and try to avoid them in the future. This will certainly be an interesting topic to write about in the future.

Danish: I need to sing more! Out loud! And talk to myself more often when I’m using Danish to study (e.g. while reading a text for research or using Anki)

Swedish: Mindfulness. I have to let my bad memories go. And stay gone. Otherwise, I’m gonna keep on doing what I’m doing. Come a long way.

Norwegian: I literally haven’t watched Norwegian TV all year and I need to do it more often. Not YouTube. Go on NRK and watch stuff.

Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea): Watch PNG documentaries where Tok Pisin is featured. Otherwise, hey…maybe speaking the official variety as used in the programs described above isn’t a bad thing at all! More reading practice would also be good.

Yiddish: Keep going through my comprehensive Anki list (it is 7000+ words). Has a lot of words that would make my language sound more natural than it already is.

Hebrew: I’m supposed to be programming this list of 10,000 most common Hebrew words into Anki. Unfortunately I have to edit the list to make it consistent and I’m not making steady progress with it. Israeli TV shows would also really help me with my vocabulary gaps. While I don’t need the subtitles at ALL to understand it, maybe I should use them from English (or even another language!) just in case I need to gain an extra degree of wisdom in the translation business.

German: The relative pronouns need fixing. Also playing video games in German with more complicated vocabulary sets would really help me.

Finnish: I guess I’ll have to speed through that Anki list of 22000 Finnish words now, won’t I? Any way I could randomize it? Or I could do the less intensive thing and use clozemaster. Television would also be good but part of me worries exactly how much time I’ll have to practice langauges with it.

Spanish (EU): I’ve tried and tried to find a way to improve and seldom does “more TV” or “more Anki” or “more Clozemaster” actually do anything. I think it’s a mindfulness thing and I don’t really know how to push away my bad memories. Sometimes they were so bad that I literally gave up the language three times. This sadly resulted in me having gone to a Puerto Rican New Year’s Party and me being unable to understand a lot of what was being said. What got me back into it? Let’s Play Videos in Spanish. That’s what. Oh, and video games in general.

Breton: The reading-with-the-glosses procedure I outlined many posts ago (split an article into sentences, look up the words you don’t know, read the article aloud and translate it into your native language).

Bislama (Vanuatu): listen to the Radio more often in Bislama

Pijin (Solomon Islands): use YouTube to watch stuff in Pijin more often, the Radio, especially in Honiara, is primarily English.

Irish: Find fun stuff to do in Irish and do it, but it has to involve listening.

Cornish: Speaking exercises about myself.

Polish: Read stuff on Facebook more often and translate it using your gloss-method. Also using Clozemaster is good to learn both vocabulary and brush up on elements of grammar.

Greenlandic (Kalaallisut): Reading exercises with the glosses.

French (EU): Clozemaster and Duolingo for verbs, look at table after table and also that gloss exercise couldn’t hurt you.

Portuguese (both EU and BR): Watch cartoons, get songs, find things to like about Lusophonecountries and movies and what-have-you.

Dutch (Netherlands): Between reading and singing, all of your weaknesses would go away.

Welsh (Southern): Reading things would help, as well Duolingo but only with verb-related or question-related skills.

Ukrainian: I have issues when I speak and often I have to go slowly. Films haven’t really helped much so I’ve enlisted Mango Languages’ Ukrainian to help me. Maybe more Duolingo would help too. Maybe I should spend more time with language-learning materials before I try immersion again.

Russian: Anki + Songs + Clozemaster.

Italian: Let’s Play Videos are not working, but maybe if I watch cartoons in Italian, they MIGHT…work…

Faroese: Use Memrise to help you get back on your toes, and use Faroese music to job your memory a bit.

Northern Sami: See how much you can remember from watching the TV shows in Northern Sami you used to watch before you decided to drop it.

Burmese: Read through all of my books, recite everything outloud and, where there is Burmese script (because not all of my books have it), write it out.

Estonian: Songs, cartoons, reading.

Hungarian: Tried immersion once, didn’t work too well, should probably go through book dialogues and simple sentences at this juncture. Mango Languages is also deployed.

Krio (Sierra Leone): I have this Peace Corps book and all of the words in the glossary should be put into a flash card program without any second thought to it.

Tajik: You have a book. You have grammar guides. Go through the grammar guides. Form sentences about yourself when you can.

Tahitian: Just keep going!

Guarani (Jopara) Prepare a stump-speech about yourself. Somehow.

Tigrinya: Invest in free books and YouTube Tutorials.

(NOTE from 29 June 2017: Since writing this post, I tried to learn Tigrinya but found the resources difficult and scarce. As a result, I’ll be learning a bit of another African native language, Mossi / Mooré, which is the primary language of Burkina Faso and also used in some surrounding states. But who knows what other languages I’ll learn and/or forget in the future?)

Today is June 6th, now the National Day of Sweden, formerly known as the Day of the Swedish Flag. As to why that day in particular was chosen, you can read the story about it here.

And if you ever go to Stockholm, I highly recommend a visit to Skansen, which is one of the most genuine experiences you will ever have in your life, guaranteed. It sometimes feels like time travel, given that many of the shops there function exactly the way they did before the Industrial Revolution.

Anyhow, if you have an interest in learning Swedish, particularly for travel purposes, you’re going to encounter a lot of discouragement on the Internet, and this piece will serve as your “antidote”.

I’ve lived in Sweden for a year. I did not leave fluent (I acquired that mantle at around early 2014, when my polyglot visions all started to come together, and when I found myself practicing with encouraging and helpful native speakers very often). But it was a good start.

But chances are if you look around the Internet, you’ll encounter, you guess it, horror stories, the same way I did with learning Danish and Icelandic. Stories from The Local (a newspaper that has English-Language editions in several countries, including Sweden and Denmark) about how “my Swedish spouse won’t talk Swedish to me, she only uses English even though I’ve asked her thousands of times to not use it” and about “why bother, given as I’ve only been answered in English?”.

(Hey, I know I’ve been repeating myself but you have NO IDEA how many hits posts like these get!)

Anyhow, as I detailed when writing about Myanmar, it was actually easier to get answered in Swedish in Sweden than it was to get answered in Burmese in Myanmar (this is taking my appearance as someone who does not look Asian into account). This was despite the fact that Sweden has among the highest rates of English proficiency in the world and Myanmar has 5% of its population as fluent English speakers.

Anyhow…

Reasons Why Learning Swedish in Sweden is a Good Idea

I was told beforehand that learning Swedish just wasn’t necessary. And then my luggage got misplaced at the airport and I couldn’t even pronounce the name of my address. I couldn’t pronounce the street names. I couldn’t even pronounce the names of businesses.

Then my housemates and I went on a shopping tour to buy things for the house (I was in the Paideia Program in Sweden). Thinking that not knowing Swedish wouldn’t be a problem, we encountered several staff members at that store who responded to our English in Swedish.

And then there was another store near Östermalmstorg (a town square near where I went to classes) in which the same thing happened to me.

(My understanding is that they might have been immigrants that underwent Swedish-language immersion beforehand to the exclusion of learning any English at all, or possibly might have learned Swedish from their environment much like I was doing in the early stages).

And to top it all off, the apartment I was in was owned by the Jewish community and we had to follow the guidelines for keeping a kosher home that were written in Swedish and seldom translated into English! (Only a few paragraphs from the guide, if I recall correctly)

Keep in mind: this was before I learned about polyglot cultures, language hacking, or before smartphones were invented. This was before I had access to any decent programs that would help me learn languages (although I would pick them up in the next few months after the events I described).

So…I was going to learn Swedish but…I had no real clue about how I would go about doing it.

The only real thing I had was the phrasebook sections in my guidebook.

I struggled. I got answered in English quite often, but sooner or later it happened a lot less often. Sometimes I encountered the occasional Swedish native speaker that would feel threatened by my level of Swedish and sometimes not-so-subtlely ignored me, treated me not very nicely, or outright refused to use Swedish with me (sometimes this still happens to me, oddly enough, although the overwhelming majority is appreciative!)

I know the feeling as well. I’ve encountered some people who have spoken English to me with virtually no trace of any accent (these have only been a handful, and keep in mind that my ear for accents is very, very sharp, especially as concerns Nordic languages). I felt a little bit threatened too, to be honest. Can’t blame others for feeling the same way.

But anyhow, enough complaining, more about advice about how to make the most of your venture.

Sweden is full of people from various backgrounds that all come to the country and learn to speak Swedish. Like Americans, Swedes are more used to hearing their language spoken in foreign accents than people of other nationalities may be.

“You pretty much have to talk like a native otherwise they’re going to answer you in English”.

WRONG!

Get good pronunciation, no doubt, especially as concerns the letter “a”, which is pronounced differently when stressed than when unstressed (I spent ten minutes trying to think of English equivalents and between the dissimilarity between English dialects I can’t think of anything suitable to illustrate the difference. “Ja” = yes = stressed, the a’s in “fattar” (understands) is unstressed.

But don’t feel that you’re under extraordinary pressure to be perfect. They may hear an accent (when I wasn’t fluent yet, I was placed in either Germany or Finland most of the time), but just because they hear an accent doesn’t mean it is English-only city for you.

Use your smartphone to your advantage

If you know what you want for breakfast, check it up on Google Translate or, better yet, go to en.wikipedia.org, look for the item you want, and then change the article language to Swedish. If you do the latter, look at the article and notice how the word pluralizes (if you haven’t gotten the hang of the flavors of the Swedish plural form yet).

If you don’t have coverage, make sure to download the Swedish language packet on the Google Translate app so that you can use it even when offline. It may not be perfect, but thanks to the fact that there are a lot of Swedish speakers in the Google Translate online community, your luck is better with Swedish than it is with something like Irish or Burmese.

Simple phrases will, more often than not, work.

For an app with very good simple phrases that will be useful in travel, I recommend the Transparent Language app that can come with many US library accounts (I don’t know if it is available outside of the US, however). For more information on how to find a library that supports the service, write a comment and I’ll help you. All of these phrases are accompanied by native speaker audio.

Mango Languages is also good for getting the hang of simple conversations that will be useful on a daily basis. It, too, is available through libraries.

If you have Swedish-speaking friends, even if you primarily use English (or another language) with them, get their help!

One of my best friends in Stockholm was a priest in the church of Sweden. Being a Swedish teacher himself, he really helped me with irregular verbs as well as assisting me with commonly mixed-up words. He helped me have my first-ever conversation in Swedish!

Even the Hebrew teacher in Paideia, who picked up Swedish later on in life, helped me as well! So you can enlist the help of your Swedish-speaking friends even though not all of them may be native speakers!

Swedish language enthusiasm is a very contagious bug (as is Swedish-culture enthusiasm, must I add). Those who get addicted get in for life. Swedish people lecture foreigners about Sweden and the Swedish language all of the time. (Admit it!) So if you have friends who have been affected, they’re going to affect you too!

And my, my, is Swedish a useful skill to have! Especially in Internet comment sections 😛

If you get answered in English and know what to say next, just continue in Swedish as if nothing happened.

I actually learned this trick from watching my monoglot family members interact with people who don’t speak English, as well as other people like the shopkeepers I mentioned above (who didn’t speak English).

Keep in mind that, in some places, native speakers get mistaken for tourists at times (I’ve heard multiple stories about this happening in the Netherlands). If you know what to say next in order to ask for directions or order food, then say it. If you don’t use English you’ll give no one any pretense to answer back in English.

But keep in mind: if you are in the company of Swedish-speakers and English-speakers, use English unless necessary so as not to come off as rude. Swedes are more sensitive towards that sense of exclusion than members of other nationalities (or so I feel).

I’ve had times when I’ve just kept using Swedish after accidentally hesitating (and getting responded to in English) and then it just continues in Swedish as if nothing happened.

Don’t dwell on mistakes

You aren’t your mistakes. Your mistakes are like the various blows of a hammer that mold you into what you are about to become.

And this will soon become the sigil of your success resulting forthwith!

Use filler words and make your sentences longer than normal.

You don’t actually want to sound like a phrasebook, you want to sound like a native speaker (or close to it). But the phrasebook stuff actually serves as a “springboard” to sounding like a native speaker.

As a result, I’ll direct you to my article here, which is valid for learning how to avoid being answered in English anywhere (taking into account that I’ve had most of my language immersion in European countries as of 2014).

Realize that Swedish People are, on the Whole, Supportive and Want you to Learn Their Language

Swedish pride is very strong. Like with other cultures, Swedish culture rewards those who have an active interest in it. You will make new friends, you will get complimented, you will be treated with awe and respect if you master conversational Swedish.

But the road to that can be difficult, but here’s the thing: looking back, picking up Swedish wasn’t too difficult in comparison to having picked up many other languages. And looking back, Sweden had among the most encouraging native speakers I’ve encountered anywhere, especially among its younger generations.

Was my immersion journey in Sweden hard? Yes

Would immersion journeys be hard anywhere else? You bet.

Did I leave Sweden fluent? No.

If I came back there, would I avoid English the entire time? Of course I would.

And when I would come back, I would remember that the last time I was there, in 2013, I was struggling an awful lot, and realizing that that fulfillment from having come a long way…could also be yours, be it with Swedish or any other language.